American Realism. Gerry Souter

Remington (1861–1909)

      Frederic Remington, Self-Portrait on a Horse, c. 1890.

      Oil on canvas, 74.1 × 49.2 cm.

      Sid Richardson Museum, Fort Worth, Texas.

      “I paint for boys – boys from ten to seventy,” said Frederic Remington. No artist in the tradition of American Realism was more American or took to life at such a fast gallop. Sketches, water colours, oils and bronze sculptures seemed to rush from him over his all too brief career documenting the Western United States. His last name alone conjures up images of long-barrelled rifles and holstered pistols looped over bullet studded belts, the chink of spurs, the snap of a whip and the whistling arc of a braided lariat. His idea of his own epitaph was: “He knew the horse.” And that he did in hundreds of images: the American pony, mustang, thoroughbred and bronco emerged from his pen; accurate from cannon bone to throat latch, withers to barrel, the conformation of his horses was always correct. Cowboys, dudes, Native Americans, wagon masters, mule skinners and homesteaders all paraded across his sketchbooks faithful to a fault.

      Then there were the great skies, huge and cloud-washed, filled with heat or deep as the ocean above the blasted landscape of desert arroyos, wind-carved buttes and the scored trails of tumbleweed. His houses were Mexican stucco, mud brick, and lumber brought down from the high timberlines and sandpapered by never-ending dust. They were Native American tepees and settlers’ ‘soddies’ that seemed to grow from the earth with layers of grass-bound earth holding up lodge pole canvas roofs.